I wonder, did humans ever metamorphize in any
time? Because I saw insects did it. Did the
neanderthal change in some way so that they could
look like humans today? I know it's not the
same exactly as insects, but how are they the same?

Question Date: 1998-03-24

Answer 1:

Metamorphosis is something pretty different from
gradually changing over time. Think about
butterflies--at first the animal is a caterpillar,
and then that same animal becomes a butterfly;
which looks very different. This happens very
quickly (days to weeks). Ancient "man" probably
looked a lot different than we do today, but
millions of years of gradual changes account for
the difference.

Answer 2:

Insect metamorphosis is pretty interesting.It
takes a lot of specialized physiology and anatomy
to let an animal turn from a caterpillar to a
butterfly, or from a maggot to fly. This change
is a lot different from the changes from early
"almost humans" to humans, though. Insect
metamorphosis takes place during the lifetime of
*one individual*. Human evolution took place by
offspring being a bit different from their
parents. In evolution, the *population* changes
over time. In metamorphosis, an *individual*
changes in its own lifetime. If people are still
around in a few hundred thousand years, they might
be different from us, but *individual* humans
still won't be able to turn into something
else.

Why do you think insects can do
metamorphosis and we can't? What is the advantage
of having a crawling, eating body form for part of
your life and a flying, mating body form for the
other part? Are there disadvantages?

As a
side note, the Neanderthals went extinct for
unknown reasons about 35,000 years ago. Fossils
suggests that we had the same ancestors they did,
but we did not evolve from them. Fossil skulls
show that Neanderthals had bigger brains than we
do!

Answer 3:

We humans don't metamorphize at all during our
life. It is true that there have been big changes
in humans over the time, but I am talking about
millions of years. That means that human look has
been changing from generation to generation : we
are taller, we live longer, we look different than
our
great-great-great-great-great-great-(etc)-grandfather
and -mother. Insects change over their life, from
their birth to the end of their life; while
humans, we just grow up.